DoubleClick promised financial analysts last week that it would begin testing its bid management tool shortly.
CEO Kevin Ryan said the company is on schedule to develop a beta version of the tool, which will work along with its DART for Advertisers online ad management platform to help companies buy and manage keywords across different search engines, by the end of the quarter.
DoubleClick ad management rival Atlas DMT, a unit of aQuantive, already offers advertisers this capability, thanks to its acquisition of Go Toast in December. Companies like Did-it.com also offer tools and services for managing search bidding.
“I think clients are very excited on search,” Ryan said in a conference call April 15. “From a bid management point of view, it's still small but growing very quickly.”
Ryan cited search and rich media as growth areas for DoubleClick to branch into while its ad management business lags the growth of the overall Internet ad market. Unlike Yahoo's 50 percent quarterly organic revenue growth in marketing services, DoubleClick reported more modest 7 percent year-over-year growth in ad management sales, as the price for ad serving stays low. Ryan said analysts should expect the technology provider to grow at a slower rate than online media companies.
“We want to be in the position in the second half of the year to have some interesting things to talk about in the search space,” he said.
